The artwork titled “Running away the Mother of God into Egypt” is an engraving on paper by Pieter Bruegel the Elder, a renowned artist of the Northern Renaissance movement. This piece falls under the genre of religious painting and depicts a scene related to a biblical event.
The engraving represents a landscape scene where the central theme is the flight of the Holy Family into Egypt, a story recounted in the Bible. The scene is rich in detail, characteristic of Bruegel’s style, featuring an expansive view that includes numerous elements of daily life and natural environment of the time. In the foreground, there appear to be figures in motion, which are likely to represent the Virgin Mary and Joseph, with the infant Jesus, as they make their way through the landscape.
The composition is carefully structured to guide the viewer’s eye through the various planes of the artwork. There are trees to the right that help frame the scene, while to the left and in the background, one can observe buildings, bodies of water, and distant hills, providing a sense of depth. Additionally, in the lower center, Latin text reading “FVGA DEIPARAE IN AEGYPTVM” translates to “Flight of the Mother of God into Egypt,” confirming the subject of the artwork.
Bruegel’s attention to detail is evident in the nuanced rendering of natural elements like trees and clouds, as well as in the human activity we can see throughout the landscape, such as people walking or the man plowing the field. The artwork captures both the divine narrative and the mundanity of life, blending the Biblical story with scenes that the contemporary viewer might find familiar.
